Prostitution and Victorian Society: Women, Class, and the State

Couverture
Cambridge University Press, 29 oct. 1982 - 347 pages
The state regulation of prostitution, as established under the Contagious Diseases Acts of 1864, 1866 and 1869, and the successful campaign for the repeal of the Acts, provide the framework for this study of alliances between prostitutes and feminists and their clashes with medical authorities and police. Prostitution and Victorian Society makes a major contribution to women's history, working-class history, and the social history of medicine and politics. It demonstrates how feminists and others mobilized over sexual questions, how public discourse on prostitution redefined sexuality in the late nineteenth century, and how the state helped to recast definitions of social deviance.
 

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Table des matières

The common prostitute in Victorian Britain
13
Social science and the Great Social Evil
32
Venereal disease
48
The Contagious Diseases Acts regulationists and repealers
67
The Contagious Diseases Acts and their advocates
69
The repeal campaign
90
The leadership of the Ladies National Association
113
Class and gender conflict within the repeal movement
137
The repeal campaign in Plymouth and Southampton 18704
171
The making of an outcast group prostitutes and working women in Plymouth and Southampton
192
The hospitals
214
The local repeal campaign 187486
233
Epilog
246
Notes
257
Selected bibliography
323
Index
337

Two case studies Plymouth and Southampton under the Contagious Diseases Acts
149
Plymouth and Southampton under the Contagious Diseases Acts
151

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